City Council will approve an Agreement to Move to South Metro Fire on Tuesday, April 17, 2018

The Meeting is Your Last and Only Chance to be Heard before the Move to South Metro Fire Goes Final

Tell Council You Want A Fair Deal

Fire protection is a big deal for everyone and we all respect and appreciate the service fire fighters provide for the City of Littleton. When Littleton’s fire partners, Highlands Ranch and the Littleton Fire Protection District, backed out of their Agreement with the City, the City explored other fire and emergency service options. The result of its exploration is the Pre-Inclusion Agreement that will be considered at Tuesday’s April 17, 2018 council meeting. Continue reading →

Linda Knufinkepresented a comparison of the cost between South Metro and Littleton Fire based on a cost per call. She used the CAFR info from each organization to make her comparisons. The data shows that South Metro’s cost per call is $5,857.29 and Littleton’s cost per call is $1,777.47. Continue reading →

City Council directed staff to negotiate for Littleton to be included within the South Metro Fire District. This will cause Littleton residents to pay more for fire and EMS protection than we are currently paying. Below are some “calculators” that you can use to see what difference it will make on your property tax liability. Just plug in your number into the blue box and the new rate will appear. Make sure you use the correct chart – there are two – residential and commercial.

We do not know how much the unification will cost us and won’t until the council votes. Once the council votes the question will have to go to the taxpayers as this will be a tax increase under TABOR.

At the 3 February workshop, city council did discuss the possibility of reducing our current 6.662 mill levy to 2 mills creating a credit to offset some of the extra charge of going to South Metro. Currently, we pay approximately $7,100,000 – crediting back some of that cost through a mill levy reduction equivalent to $4,000,000 in the form of a credit would leave $3,100,000 on the table for council to spend. They also talked about earmarking their $3,100,000 in “savings” to be spent on street maintenance.* If council decides they want to reduce our mill levy to help us pay for the increase in fire protection just how much they are willing to reduce it remains to be seen. Who knows, maybe they will decide to credit the taxpayers 100% for what we are currently providing in taxes to pay for fire protection. It is a policy question that council will decide.

*Not sure this can be done – council mandating how future council’s appropriate funds. Apparently the city attorney has a way around this difficulty.

LIFTs by-laws were amended to remove the number that defines a quorum and left the language that a quorum is a majority of the members. And the UR law defines a quorum as a majority of the number of commissioners.

It is not clear why others have deemed that a quorum of LIFT is 4 – a number that was deliberately removed from the by-laws.

Heather ?? appreciated the attention Littleton has paid to providing a walkable and a bicycle friendly community. However she was concerned about the lack of code enforcement and her concern about the safety of pedestrians and cyclists in Littleton.

Jeanie Erickson told council she is part of a Littleton Pedestrian and Safety Group and wants to work with staff on safety issues. A friend of hers was killed crossing Federal three years ago and today there is still no cross walk on that section of the roadway (vicinity of Berry and Federal). She was told one was coming but three years is too long to wait.

Linda Knufinke presented part two of her presentation on just how much moving over to South Metro for fire service will cost property owners in Littleton. Without having the benefit of council having a real discussion on the true cost of going to South Metro one can only speculate but we know that South Metro charges a 9.25 mill levy to their customers. Using that 9.25 mills she took a look at three commercial properties and presented her findings.

1600 W Mineral – If the city gave up their 6.6662 mills permanently to help defray the cost of fire the property taxes on the property at 1600 Mineral would increase $1379. If the city does not give up any of their 6.662 mills their taxes will increase by $4928. Continue reading →

If you have been keeping up with the issues surrounding the approval for The Grove then you want to read this. We have been told, along with the Planning Board and the City Council, that The Grove was approved as a “use by right.” In other words, no zoning changed was required for the project to go forward and thus no public process was required. We were told that the applicant met all the requirements of the Subdivision Exemption (Chapter 9 of the Zoning Code). The Subdivision Exemption has also been challenged – was it appropriately applied in this instance? You decide.

11-9-1: Purpose of the Subdivision Exemption Chapter states – “It is the purpose and intent of this chapter to allow the owner or purchaser of land, or agent thereof, to divide such land into not more than two (2) parcels, which meet the requirements of the governing zone district classification, without requiring a subdivision plat. The most obvious question to ask is what large parcel was subdivided in The Grove project? The question has been asked a number of times without any satisfactory answer – until now.

The question was finally posed to Michael Penny, our city manager. Here’s his response.

The Grove project was a combining of parcels and did not result in a division of land into more than two lots. Any project that requires a plat for the “re-assemblage of parcels” (see Definition of Plat in 11-1-6) would be subject to this process.

Only recently did the council update the Subdivision Exemption Code to include the combining of parcels……………that was long after the code was violated to approve the Grove for the Subdivision Exemption.